Is Life An Illusion?

The biggest question I explored in my book Illusions? Maybe when I wrote it was the question whether life was just a dream, whether reality was an illusion and that each and every one of us is just the imagination of ourselves. It is a loaded question and one that cannot be easily explained away or proven.
When I was first told about this, the person who put this big theory forward insisted that it was true. When I asked him if he could prove what he was saying, he simply told me with a twinkle in his eye, a grin on his face that if I was looking for proof that life was an illusion, I should look into hypnosis and hallucinogens. Now I wasn’t going to dope myself with LSD or DMT or get myself hypnotized but I studied the two alongside quantum physics and metaphysics.

I found the subject quite fascinating about the whole idea of reality being an illusion and wanted to know just how the illusion is projected and where exactly is the illusion being projected. I kind of imagine it like a computer program much like the film The Matrix where the character Neo discovers that he has been living in an artificially created dream world. It is only near the end of the film that he discovers he has the power to control and manipulate the program.

Which brings me to the next question…

If reality really is an illusion, is it possible to control the illusion?

If a hacker was to hack a computer program, the hacker could then make changes to the code of the program and make the program behave differently. The hacker could make the program do whatever he/she wants it to do just by making changes to the programs structure.

Would it be so hard to imagine what we could do if we could hack the illusion?

Does images of being able to fly like Superman through the clouds, being able to walk on water like Jesus comes to mind?

Scientists of today believe life is made up of a myriad of particles and atoms and that within each atom is pure energy. Teachers of the Law Of Attraction have always believed that we control and manipulate this energy by virtue of our thoughts, that it is our thoughts that shape our reality and that we pull in the people, places, experiences, events and circumstances by how we are thinking in the present moment. I will go into more detail on the Law Of Attraction in an upcoming post, but right now, back to the subject in hand….

Is life really and illusion and how can we prove and manipulate it?

As I mentioned before, I was told it was through hypnosis and hallucinogenic drugs both of which I will explain in more detail.

Hypnosis is about putting a person into a deeply relaxed state of mind, because it’s only when we are relaxed that we are open to suggestions. When a hypnotist puts someone in this relaxed state, they can then offer suggestions to that person and change their behaviour and even how that person perceives things. The famous hypnotist, Richard Bandler said that every day each and every one of us is in a trance. It’s our behaviours, our characteristics, our rituals and beliefs that are the result of the mental conditioning we received from birth .
Confused?

Well, my apologies. I’ll try to explain as best I can…

When we are born, we have no mind or perceptions of this world and when we grow up, we take in all the things we see around us. Our parents, families, friends and people we come across all tell us things, put forward their beliefs and opinions onto us. What we see on TV and read from books, newspapers is also what we take in. Whatever story, fact we choose to believe from what we see, be it from a person or book, school , TV and so on, forms our beliefs and perceptions. In a way they are like suggestions accepted like in hypnosis. Most importantly is the communication we have with ourselves. Whatever we say to ourselves and believe is, in many ways, like being hypnotized. Things like ….I feel hungry, I feel angry, I am scared, I am happy, I’m really tired; they are all suggestions and we are being hypnotized by them. To sum up, our personality, our beliefs and perceptions are the total sum of all the suggestions we have accepted. There are practically many layers of hypnosis we have undergone since childhood that has pushed us further away from who we really are. It’s given birth to something else entirely, something that we believe we are that convinces us we are this and that…the ego which the late and great Dr Wayne Dyer believes stands for ‘Edging God Out.’ The real essence of who we are is replaced by this idea of who we think we are.

I once saw a show where a hypnotist put a volunteer from the audience into a trance and convinces them that the flat end of a pencil was the lit part of a cigarette. When the hypnotist put the flat end of the pencil against the person’s arm, a blister formed much to the surprise of the audience watching. Another example was of a hypnotist who convinced an audience participant that the colour yellow did not exist in his mind. The hypnotist then arranged for a yellow crane with painted yellow chains to be brought into the studio along with a car. The chains were then attached to the car and the hypnotist told the participant that he had the power to make the car levitate with the power of his mind. You can guess what happened next. The crane lifted the car off the ground and this poor participant really believed he was making the car levitate and that he had telekinesis. But the reality was, the hypnotist had hacked his mind much like a hacker hacking a computer system or program and then making a few alterations to. The colour yellow being invisible to this participant had been programmed into his mind by the hypnotist so therefore, the hypnotist had altered this man’s perceptions of reality. There are numerous examples I can think of apart from the one I just mentioned. I’ve heard of hypnotists that have convinced people who onions taste like apples or even programme them to play a piano, cure them of fears and phobias.

To sum up, our ego’s are the total sum of all the hypnotic suggestions we have accepted. We are both hypnotist and the one being hypnotised. Every story, every opinion and beliefs we’ve accepted have formed our perceptions of how we see our individual realities.

Could this explain why this reality we are experiencing feels so real through our five basic senses because we’ve convinced ourselves the illusion is real?

For more on hypnosis, I would recommend a great book by American author, Richard Bach called hypnotizing Maria. He raises some interesting questions on the

Another theme I explored in my book, Illusions? Maybe was the subject of hallucinogenic drugs. There is a scene where one of the main characters takes a powerful hallucinogenic drink which changes and distorts his reality briefly. That moment he trips out enables him to see all reality for what it is, an illusion. He finds out that every living thing has a chemical the brain produces called DMT (Dimethyltrpolone). DMT has been known as the spirit molecule by many. Dimethyltrpolene (if that’s how you spell it) is a powerful hallucinogen, many believing it to be the most powerful. The brain only produces small traces of it when we sleep which probably explains the dream states we experience.

Now, I don’t know much about halucigenics, but the theory that our brains produce DMT in small doses does raise a lot of interesting questions.

Do drugs like LSD and Acid actually stimulate the brain to produce more of this DMT?

You probably already heard that in the far east, many masters of the martial arts, even Buddhist monks meditate for days on end, sometimes isolating themselves from human contact to get to higher states of consciousness. Indians of America go on vision quests by digging a hole in the ground and sit there for hours or days. They use powerful incense to stimulate their senses and wait for the visions to come. There are rare plants and herbs and even Shrooms that contain ingredients that stimulate the brain to create high doses of DMT that would bypass hours, even days of intense meditation, but sometimes the effects are not always pleasant.

I am not recommending that you get yourselves high and trip out on hallucinogens or go into deep hypnosis to see if you can get fleeting glimpses into infinity. I am just writing this piece in a hope I can create food for thought. Like I said before, the question of whether life is an illusion is a loaded question. It creates a multitude of other questions from this like….

How is the illusion projected and where?

Who is controlling the illusion?

Are we all experiencing the same illusion or is all this world, the universe and everything in it a figment of my imagination, or am I a product of your imagination, your intuition talking to you?

Or maybe you and everyone here and this whole world is just a creation of my brain?

I could write pages about this one question. My book, Illusions? Maybe would have been a whole lot bigger and longer had I delved deeper into this rabbit hole. You probably already guessed that the purpose of this blog is for me to write about the subjects and questions my book addresses. Because Illusions? Maybe was a work of fiction I found it was not a good idea to go into too much depth with questions like these. I may as well had written a non-fiction book on metaphysics if that had been the case.
Anyway, thank you for your time reading this. Apologies again if you spot any grammar or spelling mistakes. Feel free to comment if you wish on this subject.